Heyday The 1850s and the dawn of the global age

Review by Choice Review

Wilson has produced an insightful and engaging portrait of the world in the 1850s, the decade during which, he contends, a genuinely global modernity emerged. This modernity, characterized by the relentless eradication of time and distance, was facilitated by the rapidly expanding application of the new transportation and communications technologies of the industrial era. In highlighting the dramatic changes that these technologies unleashed in areas such as global trade, investment, mass migration, warfare, and state building, he also succeeds in illuminating the fascinating, and often unheralded, interconnections between various events, personalities, and developments of the era. At the heart of Wilson's argument, though, is the notion that the 1850s were characterized, as well, by a widely shared conviction (at least, in the Anglosphere) that the world stood on the brink of a new era of renewal, peace, and human unity. This brand of utopianism was underwritten in equal parts by free trade ideology and a boundless faith in the unlimited possibilities of new technology, and the dissipation of this heady worldview truly marked the end of the era. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Michael Hughes Markus, Alabama State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Wilson, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for What Price Liberty!, turns his considerable talents as a historian and raconteur to the turbulent 1850s, a decade riven by the forces of technological change, wide-scale migration, commodity booms, and, above all, an unquenchable belief in the "unstoppable force of progress." From the gold fields of Victoria, South Africa, to the wharves of San Francisco, Wilson's vertiginous narrative takes in vast swaths of time and space, describing nothing less than "the birth of the modern world." The optimism Wilson argues for as characteristic of the age is perhaps best captured by the tale of a Minnesota real estate agent who walks his speculator client through the site of a proposed town, confidently pointing out trees and bogs as the spots of future neighborhoods, and a patch of dense forest as "the fashionable quarter." Wilson doesn't gloss over the dark side of all this energy and expansion-colonial expropriation, ecological collapse, forced labor-and the narration is lively and breakneck. The book's conclusion hints at the parallels between the 1850s and the current age of information flows and global connectivity, making a persuasive case for the decade as both precursor and crucible of today's world. Agent: Clare Conville, Conville and Walsh Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Wilson (Empire of the Deep) returns to the world of Great Britain during the tumultuous 1850s with this latest work. The author acknowledges that by the end of this period, America had become a global player on a par with Britain, though his main focus is how Britain ushered in the modern world. This approachable work successfully avoids jargon but occasionally feels stilted and lacks personality. More disappointing, however, is that no new information or viewpoints are offered that haven't been previously published. In addition, some of the maps, for instance, those in the front matter, lack a legend to indicate size or the meaning of color. Verdict While casual readers of world history might be interested, historians and researchers will desire a more scholarly account.-Andy Shuping, White River Junction, VT © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

Did the modern world begin during World War I, in 1945, or perhaps with the steam engine in the 1700s? British historian Wilson (What Price Liberty!: How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lost, 2009, etc.) makes an engrossing case for the dozen years after 1850. That year marked the onset of a boom triggered, according to the author, by the free market that followed Britain's abandonment of mercantilism and tariffs in the 1840s. Wilson begins in 1851 London, where the Great Exhibition drew enraptured crowds to a dazzling display of world technology ("a day at the Exhibition meant sensory overload"). Although dominated by Britain, there were unexpected hits from the United States, as welle.g., Cyrus McCormick's reaper, vulcanized rubber, and the Colt six-shooter. After this initial introduction, Wilson delivers 15 largely unrelated chapters on great midcentury events. The telegraph and railroad, after two decades of modest growth, exploded across the world and under the oceans, beginning a revolution in high-speed transport and telecommunications that is still in progress. An avalanche of gold, more from Australia than California, greased economies. Against their wills, Japan and China joined the world market as Britain and Russia built Asian empiresbut not without early versions of another modern phenomenon, genocide, in India and the Caucasus. The U.S. boomed as it dissolved into civil war, which barely interrupted its expansion. The 1860s saw the U.S. replacing Britain as the center of attention in a world that "has been utterly transformed by war, mass migration, economic boom, advancing trade, and the impact of new technologies." In his epilogue on the 1873 depression, the worst in history, Wilson emphasizes that the 1850s jump-started the modern world, which is more convenient and prosperous than the old but no nicer. An above-average addition to the when-the-modern-age-began genre. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---